


tempering exile

by spoke



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:47:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/pseuds/spoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to afinch and fin for betaing, to emma for a title, and to HopefulNebula for the part of the prompt that reads 'show me what you love.'  <3</p>
    </blockquote>





	tempering exile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HopefulNebula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopefulNebula/gifts).



> Thanks to afinch and fin for betaing, to emma for a title, and to HopefulNebula for the part of the prompt that reads 'show me what you love.' <3

It is, of all places, outside a human smith’s forge that Iorek begins to find himself again. Skinless without his armor, empty with the losses of exile, still he smells the rich scent of heated metals and something within him wakens. He approaches carefully, cautious. All the smiths he has ever dealt with have been bears like himself. Of human smiths and their ways he knows nothing except they must be complicated, as with all things human.

In any case he does not care to deal with them just yet. It is only that he is curious; how do humans manage the fires needed for working metals, without fur to shield them or claws to work the metal? If nothing else, it will provide a distraction.

He leaves with some understanding, at least. Other metals, already worked, in the place of claws. More of their clothing, heavier and apparently made for the heat.

He misses the heat, and that is something he would not have expected. The last time he had visited the forges, in their cliffs by the sea, he had been so much younger. He had never fought a bear with so much experience, and in the end he had been beaten, but no expects to beat a smith.

It was afterwards, when he was learning to care for the armor, that the unexpected had happened. He had been fascinated with the forges, with the work and the craft of the metals, and had stayed far longer than he was expected to. The various smells of warming metals, of sometimes-scorched fur, the sounds of claws tearing and bending the sheets into something that would guard a warrior’s life - these things had stayed with him, long after he left the forges.

Afterwards, he went to the mines. That too had been an education, and one he now put to good use. Raising himself to his full height, he breathed deep and long, scenting as the miners had spoken of, sifting the air for the faintest trace of the metal he needed. Once he had a direction, he stopped to hunt. It was a long way inland.

But once he had the metals, he could set about building his own forge, and then... Well. At least he would be something, again.

A bear without armor is a child. A bear whose armor has been taken from him, less.


End file.
